Re: Discussion - non-free software removal
On Nov 12, John Goerzen wrote:
> Then we better just give up now, for we have been producing a useless
> operating system for almost ten years now.
>
> Remember: DEBIAN DOES NOT CONTAIN NON-FREE SOFTWARE. Only our archives do.
> Our operating system, the Debian Distribution, does not.
Yes, I'm not a complete idiot, I do understand this relationship.
BTW, belittling people who don't go through the effort of crossing
themselves ("Yes, I do understand the difference between
Debian-the-distro and Debian-the-archive, now may I express an
opinion, dear sir?") before they dare suggest that having non-free
software in our archives is a good thing is unlikely to win you much
support.
> > My gut feeling is that the current compromise has served us well as
> > long as I've been a developer, and there's no compelling reason to
>
> I disagree with your premise, and maintain that the current compromise has
> been a constant source of trouble.
Has it? Except for a few isolated grumblings about autobuilding and
migration of software to testing, I don't see (and haven't seen) a
real problem. If I'm missing this "constant source of trouble,"
please point it out to me.
I suspect the only constant source of trouble is in the heads of
people who can't sleep at night due to the fear that some debian.org
server might have non-free software on it.
Anyway, ftp.kernel.org has all sorts of software that has nothing to
do with the Linux kernel on it, yet I don't see massive confusion
there. Then again, they actually release software instead of firing
GRs at each other. ;-)
Nor do I see anything in this resolution that guarantees the
availability of the former non-free elsewhere, or the provision of an
alternate debian.org domain name for it (like "not.debian.org").
"Moving it to another server" looks to me more like "dropping it into
the memory hole." (Orwellian analogy intentional.)
> > muck with it. You can easily ignore the existence of non-free if it
> > gets your panties in a bunch, kinda like I ignore the fact that my
> > DirecTV service has several religious and shopping channels.
>
> Nice analogy in principle, but deeply flawed in practice.
Give me an example where my analogy breaks down then.
Chris
--
Chris Lawrence <cnlawren@phy.olemiss.edu> - http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/
Computer Systems Manager, Physics and Astronomy, Univ. of Mississippi
125B Lewis Hall - 662-915-5765
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